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Tue, 15 Jan 2019 19:06:45 +0000en-UShourly1Financial Planning for Small Business: Boldly Boost Your Boost Your Bodyhttps://www.tceins.com/business-insurance/financial-planning-for-small-business-boldly-boost-your-boost-your-body/
Tue, 15 Jan 2019 19:06:45 +0000https://www.tceins.com/?p=2579A small business that is run through careful planning is one that is able to handle the challenges that are consistently thrown its way. When you have strong financial planning in place, you have a road map you can follow to navigate difficult situations and avoid financial disaster. The key to small business success is not just planning for your financial future, but also following and updating those plans until you reach success.

Your Business Plan

You should never start a small business without a complete business plan in place. The financial aspects of a good business plan include income projections, payroll needs, spending projections, and growth projections. A good business plan is not a static document. It is something that you review quarterly and update to fit the needs of your growing business.

Budgeting

A small business budget should be the financial road map the company uses to grow and expand. Your budget needs to be comprehensive, and it needs to include all of your funding needs for the coming year. With your budget, you will be able to instantly tell when your cash flow is too low, which will allow you to take action quickly. Your budget will also tell you exactly what you should be doing with additional profit as it starts to accumulate.

Funding Options

One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is ignoring the need for funding options. When cash flow starts to slow down because customers are not paying their bills, you need to have good options in place for bringing in capital as needed. Credit accounts and bank loans are options, but they add to your company’s financial debt. You should be open to learning about any potential source of funding and determining when it would be appropriate to utilize each funding option.

Growth Planning

If your company’s growth is not carefully planned, then it could fail. Company growth should be broken down into individual projects where you have a very clear idea as to how each project will be funded. For example, if you are preparing to introduce a new product line, then that would require substantial funding that could come from bank loans or even peer-to-peer lending. Every step of your company’s growth, especially the sources for your financing, needs to be clearly planned.

Cash Flow

Earlier we touched on the subject of cash flow, but we did not expand on it. Cash flow is one of the most important elements to your company’s success, and it is also a strong indicator of the financial health of your company. Cash flow does not necessarily need to be limited to the liquid cash you have on hand. There are companies that will help you turn open invoices into cash, and that can be another aspect of your cash flow. The more consistent your cash flow is, the easier it is to grow your business.

If you want to boost your baby, then you need to attend to every aspect of your small business’ financial needs. From cash flow to project funding, the financial health of your small business is one of the most important success indicators you will ever have.

Back in the days when the American landscape was either rural or urban and the suburbs did not exist, the rural communities often found themselves cut off from the cities thanks to a lack of investment in communication technology. Even as wireless technology expands, some rural towns are still not able to get the same level of services one would find in a city.

This idea of isolationism for rural areas means that the community bounds found in the rural areas are often much stronger than anywhere else in the country. Rural business owners must be able to walk that line between maintaining strong community bonds and reaching out for the revenue that can be found outside of the area.

The Shrinking Rural Landscape

Back before the days of mass communication and inexpensive long distance travel, people who lived in rural areas settled in their areas and put a life together. That life included all of the people who owned the rural businesses that serviced all of the population. When people wanted to buy farm equipment, they bought it from the local farm equipment vendor.

As time went by and the world appeared to get smaller, more people left rural areas to seek out opportunity. The suburbs grew and rural business owners started to see their potential revenue drop.

The Rural Business Balance

As the population in the rural areas started to dwindle, rural business owners started to find themselves in a difficult situation. They needed to maintain their loyalty to the local community while starting to chase business dollars from outside the area in order to survive. The rural businesses that have been able to find that balance of servicing the local community while making use of online commerce have been the ones that can find success.

The Talent Pool

Another significant challenge for rural small businesses is finding the necessary talent to stay in business. A retail business that thrives in a rural setting could get swallowed up in the big city. That means that it is important for that business to stay in the rural areas if it wants to survive. The issue is that with a big chunk of the local talent pool moving out of the rural areas, there is often not enough potential employees to keep up with demand.

To help rural small businesses stay open, they must learn how to get by with very little. Hiring new employees should be done only after a comprehensive financial analysis and establishing a real need. Depending on the personnel need, small businesses might be able to benefit from the growing remote worker population throughout the country.

When you own a small business in a rural area, you are faced with a lot of business challenges. The rural businesses that survive are the ones who understand the importance of community and the opportunities that technology has to offer.

When you lease commercial property for your business, there is a very good chance that your landlord is going to require you to carry business liability insurance for protection. If you do not have business liability insurance then it is a good idea to get some for your daily business operations. But why would your commercial landlord care if you have liability insurance or not?

Protection Against Your Business Operations

As an example, let’s say that your business manufacturers caustic chemicals. One day, the measures you have in place to make sure those chemicals do not damage your facility fail and suddenly your landlord has tens of thousands of dollars in damage to try and cover. Business liability insurance with your landlord on the policy will protect your leased property from these kinds of damages.

Your landlord may ask for an extra deposit if your business contains obvious risks to the property, but those deposits may not be enough to cover real damages. A business liability policy is going to cover the damage and prevent you and your landlord from losing a lot of money.

Business Is Naturally Risky

Business liability insurance is going to protect your landlord from those unexpected setbacks that might prevent you from being able to pay your rent. For example, if you suddenly have half of your fleet of vehicles in need of major repairs, then that would probably drain your cash flow for the month. If you have to make a payment late, it is going to be your property rent and not your payroll.

When you have business liability insurance in place, you and your landlord will be protected from those unexpected moments when cash might be light. This not only protects your landlord, but it is also a great way to protect your business as well.

Stoppages In Business

Some landlords my require business liability insurance to protect against those times when business has to stop and the stop is not scheduled. If the building catches on fire and damages a considerably part of the business, then the landlord is at serious risk of not getting their rent. Business liability insurance with the landlord names as additional insured can help protect against these unexpected stoppages that can often have long-lasting effects if they are not handled properly.

Our business experts can give you a complete rundown on the types of insurance you will need to protect your business and give your property landlord peace of mind. Without the proper type of insurance to protect your business, you could be inviting financial disaster. But when you have all of the right kind of protection in place, then you are making smart business decisions that will keep your company operating for many years to come.

]]>Small Business Ownership in Suburban America: Where Quality of Life Is Keyhttps://www.tceins.com/business-continuation/small-business-ownership-in-suburban-america-where-quality-of-life-is-key/
Tue, 18 Dec 2018 17:14:43 +0000http://www.tceins.com/?p=2445

If you think about how the American landscape has shifted over the past 100 years, you come to some interesting conclusions. Back 100 years ago, cities were the place to live where neighborhoods all developed their own identities. Cars and mass transit were not widely available, so there need to be small businesses on every block to cater to the population. As technology advanced and the freeway system caused people to move out of the cities, those small business owners suffered.

That idea if the neighborhood small business never really left the American landscape. It just shifted to the suburbs where small business owners are setting up new shops at a record pace. But what are the challenges that face small businesses in the suburbs and how can businesses overcome those challenges?

Finding Good People

The small businesses in the city had problems growing because they could never find the right employees in the locally available talent pool. This idea of a hiring issue has followed small businesses into the suburbs where local talent pools are either hit or miss. The wide availability of transportation makes it easier for businesses to hire from outside their neighborhood, but the problem of getting talented people to work for small suburban businesses still exists.

Limited Customer Base

A small suburban business that is designed to generate revenue from local foot traffic is not going to be able to supplement its income with online sales. The business will need to focus its resources on generating foot traffic revenue, and in some suburban areas that can be a problem. There are many parts of the suburbs that are getting rezoned as commercial, which can be devastating to a suburban business.

Be A Good Resident

One way a small suburban business can survive is to be an active part of its local community. Quality customer service starts by becoming an integral part of your customers’ lives, which means that suburban small businesses need to become involved with their customer base and be considered one of the community.

Become Transparent

A small business trying to make its way in a suburban neighborhood must be honest with every customer and have completely transparent business practices. Once again, the mark of a quality business is one that the customers trust. If a small suburban neighborhood does not feel it can trust its local businesses, then it simply will not patronize those businesses.

Suburban businesses are starting to feel the pinch as online shopping and a trend back towards city living is starting to pull business out of the suburbs. But if a suburban business keeps an eye on staying in line with the quality of life that the neighborhood it serves insists on, then it can become that integral part of the community that survives for many years.

As you go through your commercial and personal insurance lines with your agent, your agent points out that you do not have any glass coverage on any of your personal or commercial vehicles. To you, glass coverage seems like an unnecessary expense considering how infrequently you would have to use it. The next day, you get a chip in the windshield of your car that quickly turns into a full crack. That is when you find out just how inexpensive glass coverage is compared to the cost of having glass replaced.

Insurance Tries to Offset Every Expense

The purpose of good insurance is to make sure that you are covered for any and every potential incident without having to take money out of your own pocket. If you get into an accident with your car, you can use your rental car coverage to get a rental vehicle at no expense to yourself. Without that coverage, you are left scrambling for a way to work every day. When you get insurance, you should get insurance that covers all possible expenses you could accumulate.

Premiums Pay for Themselves

Glass coverage added to your standard auto insurance policy is generally not very expensive, and most coverage will pay 100 percent for window replacement costs. If you take a look at how much it costs to replace the average vehicle windshield and do the math, you will realize that you will have to pay a lot of glass coverage premiums to reach the cost of having a windshield replaced. When you add in the fact that your glass coverage will keep repairing and replacing windows even after you have already had one replaced, you can start to see how this coverage would pay for itself.

Covering All Risks

Our risk mitigation professionals are always keen to point out that the worst time to find out how much money glass coverage could save you is if you don’t have it and you need to replace windows in your car. When you are buying insurance, you are covering as many risks as possible. Adding glass coverage removes a risk that could save you a lot of money in the future.

Multiply it by Your Fleet

A commercial fleet of vehicles is going to experience a wide array of problems, including glass issues. In some areas, commercial vehicles with cracked windshields are considered more dangerous than consumer vehicles. When you get your glass coverage, you are saving your company a great deal of money on routine maintenance and repair issues.

Glass insurance, for your personal and commercial lines, is a necessity. If you use that coverage just once, it more than pays for itself. If you use that coverage more than once, then you just became a smart consumer who saved themselves a lot of money with the right insurance coverage.

As a business owner, you need to be very sensitive to every aspect of employee productivity and the things that can negatively affect productivity. While we are all aware of the negative impact bad morale can have on productivity and how much a lack of proper equipment can slow employee progress, most business owners do not give much thought to how identity theft can affect productivity and what can be done to prevent it.

Restoring An Identity

As an employer, you store a great deal of personal data about your employees. From social security numbers to bank account information and health profiles, an employer has plenty of information criminals would be interested in.

It takes the average identity theft victim 200 hours to recover their identity and wash away the damage the criminal has caused. Because most of those hours need to be spent during standard working hours, an employer would lose $4,000.00 of productivity for an employee making $20.00 per hour.

Faith In The Company

Turnover is a big problem in the corporate world, especially for small businesses. A company that does not take the necessary steps to secure sensitive employee data could find itself experiencing significant turnover, even from employees who are not affected.

Many people go into a preemptive security mode when they find out that someone close to them has had an issue with identity theft. While leaving a company does not mean that an employee’s data is going to be erased from their system, many people feel that leaving a company that cannot secure employee data is safer than adding new data to an exposed profile.

Preventing Identity Theft

It is important for employees to understand that preventing identity theft is a cooperative effort with their employer. Employees should be mindful of policies covering the use of the Internet and opening attachments to emails. Those policies are created to prevent breaches in the company’s online security system and violating those policies invites criminals into your business.

Businesses need to work with online security experts to learn how to limit access to their internal network through the Internet, but still allowing for the smooth swapping of information that businesses need. Each Internet security program should be customized to fit the needs of each individual business. An Internet security system should be reviewed and updated at least once a year to keep up with changes in security concerns.

As a business owner, it is your job to consider everything that can have a negative and positive effect on employee productivity. When employees feel like their personal information is not safe with their company, that can affect productivity and create turnover. When an employee’s identification has been compromised, it can take hundreds of work hours to correct that situation.

Companies need to invest in identity theft prevention programs that include strong Internet security policies. The more a company invests in the security of its employees and employee information, the lower the costs of doing business will become for that company.

The insurance industry is one of the largest in the world with revenues totaling approximately $4 trillion per year. As with most large industries, the insurance world has been hesitant to give in completely to technology for fear that one simple mistake could set off a catastrophic chain reaction. But over the past few years, the insurance industry has been using new technology more and more to the point where the future of insurance looks to rely heavily on technology.

Big Data

In recent years, the ability to collect data that a corresponds to people’s life choices and consumer preferences has been growing rapidly. Marketing experts use this data to streamline their marketing campaigns to target only audiences that would have a definite need for a particular product or service.

For insurance companies, collecting big data means learning how people live and better understanding the risks people face. This will allow companies to offer customized policies for individual customers and offer discounts to customers based on their own personal abilities to avoid risk.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The biggest benefit of utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) is helping insurance companies to become more efficient and streamlined in their business operations. Years ago, the idea of allowing a computer to underwrite a policy was unheard of. But today, AI is making it possible for computers to replace humans in many aspects of the insurance industry, and this is going to make insurance companies more efficient. The use of AI is also going to help speed up claims processes and make it easier for policy owners to get their check after a claim has been filed.

Blockchain Technology

When most people think of blockchain technology, they think of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. But the idea of a blockchain is something that could change insurance and many other industries. In the insurance industry, the idea of a full electronic ledger with all of a person’s data on it could cut down on application times, claim times, administration costs, and almost eliminate the errors that currently plague the insurance industry. This is all still in the early stages of development, but it is something to look for in the future.

Other Technological Innovations On The Horizon

Many insurance companies are experimenting with claims done without any human involvement (except for the client) at all. This is where AI can help to expand the capabilities of an insurance app and make an insurance company more profitable.

There is technology in development that could help to cut out the many middlemen that exist in insurance and bring a more cost-effective solution to agents and customers. With advances in big data and AI, it may be possible to cut out underwriters and brokers to allow agents to deal more directly with customers.

The future in any industry is tied directly to advances in technology. In insurance, there is a great deal of innovation going on in the way of cutting out inefficient processes and streamlining all insurance systems. This could mean lower costs to insurers and, inevitably, lower premiums for customers.

One of the first things you notice when you open a business is how different commercial insurance lines are from personal insurance lines. For example, most homeowner insurance policies offer fairly comprehensive types of coverage for theft. In some cases, your homeowner’s insurance would cover losses from thefts that happened when you were on vacation. Commercial insurance, unfortunately, is not as comprehensive as personal insurance and that is why crime insurance exists.

What is Crime Insurance?

Crime insurance is commercial insurance a business owner can buy as a standalone policy, or as an add-on to other types of commercial insurance. With crime insurance, the business owner can determine what types of crimes they want to be protected from and what types of assets are protected. There are also general crime insurance policies that cover basic items such as equipment or cash, but most business owners prefer to put together their own crime insurance coverage ranges to cover their particular type of business.

What Does Crime Insurance Protect Against?

The protection offered by crime insurance is broad, but it can all be grouped under the concept of protecting against loss due to criminal activity. The most common coverage options protect against theft, vandalism, fraud, and illegal marketing practices by the competition. But a business owner can also get coverage against specific crimes such as embezzlement, employee theft, damage to field equipment, and a wide variety of other specific types of coverage.

How Is A Policy Put Together?

Some companies offer pre-packaged crime insurance policies, but for the most part this type of policy is specialized and personalized. Instead of paying for a broad range of coverage types, companies will examine their business processes to determine where they specifically need protection against crime.

It is also not unusual for companies such as construction contractors to take out crime insurance policies based on the needs of individual projects. For example, if the company has a large project where it will be using a lot of its own equipment, then it is going to want a crime insurance policy with more protection for stolen or vandalized equipment.

Comprehensive Coverage

Many crime insurance policies can be written to protect company assets when those assets on on company premises and when those assets are not on the premises. For example, a company that is allowing employees to work from home might take out extra crime insurance to protect the laptop computers they will have to issue to each employee.

Our business experts can sit down with you and discuss your crime insurance needs. Most businesses do not realize they need crime insurance until it is too late. Our experts can point out areas in your business operations where crime insurance can act as protection against unexpected employee behavior or unexpected third-party activities. Crime insurance is just another part of the commercial insurance world that helps business owners to have peace of mind.

As the summer gets closer, your business will probably consider bringing on a couple of interns to help some college kids get industry experience that they badly need for their resume. The idea of opening up some positions for interns is a very noble gesture, but there are some pros and cons you need to consider before you actually start interviewing candidates.

New People Mean New Ideas

Sometimes people with years of industry experience view a problem and only see the standard solutions that have not been effective in the past. An intern offers a fresh set of eyes and a new perspective on issues your company is facing. That fresh perspective could be just what you need to re-energize your company and move forward.

Finding Work To Do

Whether you are offering paid or unpaid internships, you are still offering every intern experience that they badly need. But what happens when there is a lull in the work and you have nothing to offer? It can be frustrating for you and a bright-eyed intern when there is no work to do and your intern is looking to you for industry experience.

Low-Cost Summer Help

The truth is that even paid internships do not pay a whole lot, which means that you are getting summer help for a relatively low cost. You can use that help to get small office projects you have been meaning to get done all summer, and you can afford your hard-working staff the assistants they need to be more productive.

Inexperienced Low-Cost Summer Help

Your interns might be eager to get to work but, for the most part, they have no idea what they are doing. Your staff will have to spend considerable time training your interns on even the most basic tasks, and that can severely slow down productivity. You might be getting inexpensive or even free interns, but you will be paying for those free interns in hours lost to basic industry training.

The Class Clowns

Some interns will have a sense of humor that will help them to cope with their new experience, but others are simply immature kids who cannot seem to understand the serious nature of their situation. While you might revel in the summer help you think you will be getting, you might wind up with a class clown who has little to no interest in taking advantage of the situation.

Your Future Stars

It is not uncommon for interns to go on to successful academic careers and then come back to the company they interned for as full-time employees. You can look at an internship as a sort of trial run for those who are new to the industry but eager to learn. You can use that internship to mold your interns into the types of future employees you want them to be.

There are many companies in this country that welcome summer interns to help students get their first introduction into the industry of their choice. If you are offering internships, then you are doing a noble thing to help the youth of the country. But before you actually take on any interns, you might want to evaluate the situation and make sure it is the right thing for your company.

As a building contractor, you always want to make sure that your company is protected in the event of any unforeseen problems such as theft of materials or damage to a project in progress. As a construction project owner, you want to be sure that the investment you are making in your property is protected from accidents and unexpected incidents. In many cases, builder’s risk insurance is the solution to all of these problems.

What Is Builder’s Risk Insurance?

Builder’s risk insurance protects a property that is under construction or going through major renovations. A builder’s risk policy can protect against:

Fire

Theft of materials

Theft of equipment

Weather-related damage

Vandalism

Unexpected explosions

In general, a builder’s risk policy is only in effect for anywhere from three to 12 months. For larger projects, builder’s risk insurance is purchased for each part of the project to make sure the coverage does not run out before the project ends.

Why Contractors Need Builder’s Risk Insurance

A construction job site can be an unpredictable place where anything can happen. While a contractor usually enters into a project with plenty of liability insurance, there are many aspects of construction liability insurance will not cover. A construction contractor needs builder’s risk insurance to make sure that they are fully protected for each project.

Why Project Owners Need Builder’s Risk Insurance

The unpredictable nature of construction is what makes builder’s risk insurance so important for project owners. If you have existing buildings on a construction site, then you want to protect those buildings from accidents coming from the construction activity. Sometimes project owners buy specific materials they want used in their projects and builder’s risk insurance will protect those materials if they are damaged or stolen.

Why Your Business May Need Builder’s Risk Insurance

If you are having a contractor come to your business to do a remodeling or expansion project and your business does not invest in builder’s risk insurance, then you could be making a mistake. In a remodeling project, any parts of your building you are trying to preserve could be damaged during the construction process. With builder’s risk insurance in place, your entire building is protected from those unexpected events that could turn into financial disasters.

What Type Of Builder’s Risk Insurance Should You Get?

Our business consultants are experts in putting together builder’s risk insurance policies that cover your exact needs. You should never purchase a generic risk policy. You should only utilize a policy that has been crafted by an expert who understands your construction or remodeling situation.

Builder’s risk insurance is one of those protections that business owners who are not in the construction field do not give a lot of thought to. But if you are having construction work done for your company or if you are having your business location remodeled, then builder’s risk insurance could help you avoid financial disaster if something goes wrong.